Which tech skills do you need to future-proof your IT career?

Ambitious tech professionals seeking to up-skill and future-proof their careers should consider areas such as cyber security, business intelligence, data science/big data, DevOps, JavaScript and UX/UI development and design, according to New York-based global recruitment firm, Hays.

Digital transformation and data challenges are heating up the talent war, Hays pointed out and software development skills were core to most of the opportunistic areas.

“It’s not just native digital organisations embracing the latest transformative technologies, more traditional organisations are making strategic investments to ensure that they remain relevant in the digital world. If jobseekers have what it takes to not only help them on their journey but help them operate in their new world, it’s likely they’ll find themselves in the driver’s seat of their career,” said Adam Shipley, a Hays senior regional director.

Breaking it down specifically, Hays said large organisations were keen to hire cyber security specialists, particularly within the finance, utilities and retail industries, which are battling it out to attract the best talent.

In the area of business intelligence, Hays specified that as companies ramped up their investments into protecting, managing and exploiting their data, candidates with BI skills were highly sought after to help drive operational decision making.

With the size of data continuously growing along with machine learning and predictive analytics, Hays said a range of skills and new roles will be created, so a broad skills set is required across technology, statistics and stakeholder engagement.

Competent engineers with in-depth scripting skills will also be in high demand along with JavaScript skills, Hays highlighted. Both large and small companies will embark on enhancing their customer experience, therefore paving the way for the UX/UI development and design.

“This [JavaScript] is perhaps the hottest skill developers need to upskill in for the foreseeable future,” Hays noted. “Developers should seek to gain experience of building applications with these technologies in a commercial environment, particularly with Node.JS, Angular.JS and React.JS.”

In January, Hays released its Specialist Recruitment report, that pointed out PHP and Drupal developers were just two of a variety of sought after skills as demand heats up this year, as more organisations use the language. Large corporations will also seek out Drupal developers.

Government departments were also on the look out for people with SAP data migration skills, which will increase the need for BI (business intelligence) and data migration analysts, Hays said.

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